Told by Pearl Summers
I’ve seen horrible things in my life. A flattened cat at the side of the road. A waterfall of blood after Shushanna got her tooth knocked out in gym class. The time my cousin got stung on her eyelid by a wasp, and it swelled shut to the size of a baseball. But none of those things compared to what happened to Shady…because who knows who ran over the cat, Gavin threw the dodgeball that hit Shushanna, and the wasp sting was obviously the wasp’s fault. But Shady’s panic attack—that was because of me.
After Shady’s mom came and helped him out to the car, the day mostly went back to normal, but I couldn’t stop picturing his body vibrating like it was about to explode. I didn’t even stay to do the final count of CandyGram money with Rebecca and Monica. When the bell rang, I ran home to make things right—only, as hard as I tried, things only went more wrong.
As soon as I got inside, Juliette started whining and yapping.
Yip, yip, yip.
She danced around me, then ran down the hall to the door that connects to our garage. She scratched at it with her front paws, then ran back.
Yip, yip, yip.
She circled and did the same routine again.
“Shhhhhh,” I scolded. Juliette followed me down the hall toward the garage door. On my way past, I reached up and carefully reaffixed the sign that was coming loose. Stay out. Plant Isolation Music Experiment in Progress. The playlist I’d set up on my laptop was blaring. Good. I just needed to deal with Juliette, and then I could do what needed to be done.
“Come on,” I said.
“Outside, then peanut butter.” Outside and peanut butter are my dog’s favorite words, and as soon as I said them, she trotted at my side with only the odd yap. I opened the back door, and she went out. Then I started preparing a mega-sandwich: four slices of bread piled one on top of the other with jam in between each piece.
After I’d called my mom to let her know I was home safe, I filled Juliette’s chew toy with organic peanut butter. When I let her in, she went straight to work licking it, and I was able to sneak away to the garage.
“It’s me,” I called over the music, but I didn’t even have to say it. Yes, she was disruptive, loud, totally stinky, and extremely messy, but she was also almost as smart as Juliette. The second Svenrietta heard the doorknob turning, she knew it was mega-sandwich time.
Wak. Wak. Wak.
Svenrietta waddled over, looked up, and waited obediently.
Wait, right? What was the duck doing in my garage?
Trust me. I’d been asking myself the same thing for the last four days. I hated that duck. And when she disappeared, if you’ll remember, I was standing at the front of the gym as Elfina, about to sing my solo. There were tons of witnesses in the room who could swear it wasn’t even physically possible for me to steal the duck!
But I did.
The day Svenrietta went missing, the whole school was searching for her. Kids walked the schoolyard calling her name. Mr. Nelson checked every broom closet. Mr. Sadako crawled under the stage with a flashlight. Mrs. Mackie put out an announcement for all of us to look behind our coats and in our cubbies. Every single person wanted to find Svenrietta, except me—so, of course, I was the unlucky one.
Dad was picking me up because I had lots of stuff to bring home. Specifically, the boxes that needed to be wrapped to look like presents for the holiday musical. I’d offered to do it because I’m a good present wrapper, and, as the Sock Ball/Suck Ball banner disaster proved, you can’t leave these things to just anyone if you want them done right.
Most of the boxes, which were piled at the back of the gym, were still collapsed, but they were stacked inside one that wasn’t. And when I lifted it:
Wak!
I nearly dropped the box of boxes. I wish I had. If I’d left it there on the gym floor, someone else would have found her eventually. I mean, probably. Even once I knew she was in there, she was hard to spot. She’d nestled herself way into one corner, and her brown feathers blended with the cardboard.
And, yes, I could have taken her straight to the office to turn her in. But in that moment, I had this thought, which I’d been having for weeks: Ducks don’t belong at school. Not only had she ruined my solo that day, but she was always getting feathers everywhere and disrupting class with her quacking. Plus—even with the diaper—she smelled. It wasn’t her fault, exactly. She was a wild animal. She belonged outside! Which was exactly where I was going to put her. I just had to get her out of the building first.
That was easy. By hiding in the box, she’d practically done the job for me. I carried her to the car and put her in the trunk. It was only once we got home that things got complicated.
“I’m taking these to the backyard to shake the dust off them,” I told my dad once he’d parked the car. He had a teleconference to do. He wasn’t really paying attention, so it was easy enough to carry the boxes to the back deck to release the duck.
The only problem was, she refused to be released.
“There,” I said, tipping the box gently onto one side. “Go free!”
Wak.
“Come on.” I shook the box a little. “Now’s your chance.” She didn’t budge, so I took a deep breath and reached in. “Ouch!” She bit me. Well, not bit-bit me. It was more of a nip. I couldn’t even tell if she had teeth, really…but she definitely beaked me.
“Stupid duck!”
By then, Juliette had spotted me through the back door. She wanted to come out and play. She was barking her head off. It was only a matter of time before she disturbed my dad on his call, and he came to see why I wasn’t letting her out.
“Okay. Enough,” I told the duck. “Out!” I tipped the box almost upside down.
Wak, wak, wakwakwakwak.
Svenrietta was losing her mind—which seemed rude since I was only trying release her into her natural habitat, but as I righted the box, I heard a faint rolling noise. I looked in, and then I understood.
A big grayish-white egg had come to rest in one corner.
Yes, Svenrietta had bitten/beaked me. But it was because she’d been protecting her baby!
“Oh,” I said again, this time with dread. I’d seen eggs hatch at an exhibit at the science museum. It happened inside a plastic dome that was temperature-controlled because the eggs and chicks needed to stay warm.
It was December. There were, like, three feet of snow in the yard. Setting Svenrietta free in the wild was one thing. She had feathers. She’d fly away and make a nest or something. She’d be fine. But if I set her egg free, too, it would freeze. And that was one big step up from ducknapping. That was duck murder.
I had to think fast—which is where the idea for the plant experiment in the garage came in. I wasn’t even exactly lying. I was planning to do an experiment for the science fair—Do plants grow better when you play them Beyoncé twenty-four hours a day?—and it was a great way to keep my parents out of the garage. (Isolation was my control factor.) Most importantly, the music helped to drown out the duck sounds, because Svenrietta wasn’t quiet.
At first, it was only going to be for one night. My plan was to drop an anonymous note on Shady’s desk, telling him where and when to find her, then leave her and her egg in a safe spot—but he didn’t show up at school the next day, or the one after that, or the one after that.
“Sit, Svenri.” I did the hand motion I’d seen Shady do. I tore off a piece of mega-sandwich. She waited until I threw it, then caught it midair in her beak.
“How’s Aggie today?”
While Svenrietta ate, I walked over to check. The nest she’d built for her egg was mostly made of shredded newspaper and strips of cardboard she’d pulled off some old boxes. It was nestled inside one end of my parents’ two-person kayak—nice and warm.
And okay, I know. Aggie? Yes, I’d named the egg. But it was hard not to get attached to both of them. Svenrietta was a good mom—always going right back to the nest after she ate. And I liked the way she closed her eyes and her whole body seemed to relax when I petted her.
I knew I couldn’t keep them any longer though. Not after Shady’s panic attack. Svenrietta had to go home. He needed her.
My new plan was simple. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour. That was plenty of time to put on some gardening gloves, scoop Svenrietta’s nest and Aggie into a box, wrap some old towels around them for warmth, walk the two blocks to Shady’s house, put the box on the doorstep, then ring the bell and wait in the bushes to make sure someone answered and took them in.
It would have been as easy as that, too, if it wasn’t for the sudden, frantic scratching at the door.
Yip. Yip. Yip, yip, yip.
Juliette had finished her peanut butter. Her doggy senses had been telling her for days that there was a duck in the garage, and she was desperate to get in. Of course, I wasn’t going to let her, only…
YIP, YIP, YIP.
The barking got louder, nearly drowning out Beyoncé. Before I knew what was happening, Juliette was inside. I must have left the door unlatched when I’d come in! Total disaster!
“Stop, Juliette!” I yelled as she raced toward Svenri. “No! Bad dog!” I tried to grab her, but she was already nipping at Svenrietta’s tail feathers. The duck flapped her wings frantically and landed on some boxes, just out of Juliette’s reach. For a second, I thought everything was going to be okay, but then she flapped again and went even higher, up into the loft space of the garage where my parents store lawn chairs, the patio umbrella, and other stuff we don’t need until spring.
“Get out, Juliette!” I grabbed my dog and put her back in the house, but by then it was too late. Svenrietta had waddled to the back of the loft.
I dragged a storage container over and stood on top so I could see her.
“Here, ducky, ducky.” I put a piece of sandwich down at the edge of the loft, but she was too freaked out to come get it. Her feathers were quivering. She was panting.
I searched the garage for something I could climb up on, but even standing on two big containers didn’t get me high enough to swing my leg up, plus it was tippy—then…
“You in there, sweetie?”
I nearly toppled off my tower of containers.
My dad had been away on a business trip. I wasn’t expecting him home that early.
“Don’t come in!” I yelled. “It’ll wreck the plant experiment.”
“Okay,” he said. “But meet me in the living room when you’re done. I have a surprise for you.”
I left some bread and a dish of water on the ledge for Svenrietta, then dragged the big containers back to their spots. My dad always brought good stuff home from his trips. Last time it was a pair of bedazzled noise-canceling headphones he found at the Dallas airport. “I’ll be back to check on you later,” I said softly to Svenrietta.
It wasn’t until I had my hand on the doorknob that I remembered: Aggie!
If Svenrietta was too scared to come down to take care of her egg, what would happen to it? The temperature wasn’t freezing in our garage, but it wasn’t exactly warm either.
I walked over to the kayak and peered inside. “Okay, Aggie,” I said. “I guess you’re coming with me.” I put the egg in the front pocket of my sweatshirt and wrapped one hand around it to keep it warm. Then I went to see what Dad had bought me.